Testi Dagon - I Monster

Dagon

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall
be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone
makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself
from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my
slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read
these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise,
why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death
It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific
that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German
sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces
of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our
vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all
the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed,
was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I
managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good
length of time
When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my
surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the
sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew
nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair,
and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun;
waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some
habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in
my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue
The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know;
for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous.
When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy
expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations
as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away
Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so
prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more
horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a
sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with
the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I
saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not
hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in
absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing,
and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very
completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me
with a nauseating fear
The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its
cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet.
As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could
explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval,
a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface,
exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under
unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had
risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging
ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the
dead things
For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its
side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens.
As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed
likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time.
That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack
containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the
vanished sea and possible rescue
On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease.
The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver
things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal.
All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose
higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped,
and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that
object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth
evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher
than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in
sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the
shadow of the hill
I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and
fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain,
I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more.
Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again.
And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day.
Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less
energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred
me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence
I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of
vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit
of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon,
whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine.
I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless
chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise
Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness
As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the
valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and
outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent,
whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual.
Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with
difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath,
gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated
All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the
opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me;
an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending
moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself;
but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position
were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with
sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude,
and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since
the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a
well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps
the worship of living and thinking creatures
Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or
archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely.
The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering
steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of
water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions,
and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm,
the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I
could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a
system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in
books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as
fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like.
Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to
the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen
plain
It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound.
Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size,
were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a
Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least,
a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes
in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine
which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare
not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint.
Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably
human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and
flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall.
Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion
with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of
killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked,
as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that
they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring
tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first
ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this
unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring
anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the
silent channel before me
Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the
surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like,
and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the
monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its
hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then
Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back
to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal,
and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections
of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate,
I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only
in her wildest moods
When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital;
brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my
boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had
been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific,
my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing
which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist,
and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend
of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional,
I did not press my inquiries
It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the
thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease,
and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it
all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous
amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a
pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the
open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself,
but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply.
I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that
may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed,
worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable
likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when
they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the
remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink,
and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body
lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window!
The window!